"Taking aim" at hurricane coverage

Watching the cable news coverage of Hurricane Ike the past few days, I've been amazed anew at how sensational it all is. I was with my Mom this weekend and she is a voracious televised news consumer. All of the news channels are programmed into the remote under 'favorites' so she can scroll through more easily. Needless to say I saw A LOT of the coverage and from different stations. 

The Weather Channel was calling in all of their 'experts' and switting between their four meteorologist reporting from Texas. Then, what all the headline writers were waiting for happened: CNN.com reports that one person drowned off the coast of Texas, and Ike officially became a "deadly" hurricane. Then when the National Weather Service said that some families in some parts of Texas would face "certain death" if they didn't evacuate, several of the news stations seized on that. More than one made it their banner on the bottom of the screen, so that even if you were flicking by the channels casually, you couldn't miss the word "death" jumping out at you. 

I noticed that the headline writers had a tendency to personify the hurricane, a trend that started around the time of WWII when hurricanes were first being named. Headlines on the channels said things like 'Ike takes aim at...' or 'threatens', or USA Today said Ike was "marching" inward. Other sources reported on Ike's 'punches' and his 'wrath'. Our culture likes everything to be a narrative, and every good story needs a good villain. Personifying a hurricane enables you to give it motivations and intentions, and it certainly makes it more dramatic. Having a storm that 'targets' Texas is much more interesting than one that is merely headed that direction.

The news channels try to write the most ominous headlines to grab your attention when you flick by, and then once you choose their station, they pack their crawl full of sensational phrases and comments, and show you their reporters stationed in the heart of the storm braving the elements. As my mom flipped through her favorites on the remote, it seemed to be a competition as to which channel could be the most dramatic and exciting. If it seemed over-the-top, it's because the stations know how to get our attention: we watch drama. We stop on the channel whose headline includes Ike 'slamming,' 'ravaging,' destroying,' or 'wreaking devastation,' and whose footage includes collapsed buildings and a dumpster floating down the street (Weather Channel, for the record). The more extreme or bizarre, the more we watch. 

As MSNBC switches between news stories and their hurricane graphic sweeps across the screen (accompanied by a whooshing sound), I can't help but think that I'll miss my new friend Ike, whom I've come to know so well recently. Maybe if we're lucky, another deadly hurricane will be born, to take aim at us and wreak some devastation. That would make for compelling television.